Why we need to recognise the breadth of emerging liberties
even as we doubt their depth
I want to argue that liberty is taking root in Africa.
Not as fast as we would like. But this should not discourage us. Liberalism
grows slowly, at an evolutionary pace. It is tyranny that grows faster, at a
revolutionary pace. It is quick and easy to build a dictatorship because this
requires the single-minded actions of an individual or small group commanding
an all-powerful state. But it is hard and slow to build a liberal democracy
because this requires the development of a set of traditions of fairness and
justice within society over time.
Hence liberal traditions, although they need a state to
defend and protect them, evolve out of society. Tyranny grows from the state,
from the actions of a single powerful man (an Adolf Hitler or a Josef Stalin or
an Idi Amin) backed by a powerful organisation (party or army). However, it is
not only evil men who threaten liberty. Neither is it (as Frederick Von Hayek
suggested) only the actions of well-intentioned leaders whose actions are
justified by immediate necessity. The danger to the cause of liberalsim in
recent years has been utopian dreams of exporting it by force – witness Iraq,
Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.
Strong men build personal dictatorships and this can lead to
the establishment of order. However, attempts to export democracy by force have
stimulated violence and terrorism. What we get is neither liberty nor
order but anarchy. Liberal values take time to germinate and grow. So attempts
to export liberty by force tend to force long-term trends to a premature
conclusion. This has ignited illiberal forces of ethnic or religious
intolerance within society leading to mass violence. This is because liberalism
is not an ideal that can be exported and imposed on a society. Rather it is an
ideal that grows under specific historic circumstances.
As Karl Popper argued, liberal principles are principles of
assessing and if necessary modifying and/or changing existing institutions
rather than of replacing existing institutions. Edmund Burke would have
entirely agreed. Therefore, we need to see liberalism as an evolutionary, not revolutionary
creed. Those of us who believe in liberal politics need to oppose attempts to
impose democracy/freedom on other societies by force and other quick fixes
through aid conditionality and threats of ICC.
Liberty has two aspects, one economic, the other political.
The two are closely intertwined. Often the economic drives the political but
this is not always the case. In rare circumstances the reverse has happened.
The biggest influence on me was Hayek, especially his book, `The Road to
Serfdom’. Western thought had grown to believe that economic and political
freedoms were separable. It was thought and argued that one could, and indeed
should, curtail economic freedom for the sake of economic security. Hayek set
out to hit this argument on its head. He argued that there was a tight nexus
between economic and political freedom and unfreedom. The road to serfdom in
the economic sense was the road to totalitarianism in the political sense.
Coming to Africa, I am hopeful because over the last two and
a half decades, we have witnessed the rapid expansion of the market system on
the continent. Old ideologies of state control of the economy have given way to
liberal economic policies – for the most part. These economic reforms are
essential to the growth of liberty. Across our vast continent, state
enterprises have been privatised, public monopolies have been disbanded and
most sectors of the economy have been liberalised. Liberal economic reform has
been more successful than political reform but this too has seen tremendous
growth across most nations of Africa.
After independence; especially in the 1970s and 80s, African
nations were hostile to liberal economics and politics. So they nationalised
private enterprises, confiscated private property, and created and/or expanded
public monopolies. They put in place price controls for foreign exchange, cash
crops and other goods like sugar and salt. And they established one party or
military governments. These economic policies led to economic decay, sparking
off political demands for reform of the economy and politics. The wave of
democratisation in the 1990s was a political response to economic failure.
When, across most of Africa, governments began rolling back
the state, many analysts attributed this to pressure from international
financial institutions especially the International Monetary Fund and World
Bank. But this is not entirely true. It is only true in the sense that the
voice of the IMF and World Bank was louder because they controlled money.
Governments in Africa that went seeking for money from international lenders
did so in order to stave offpolitical threats emanating from economic failure
at home.
We must remember that after independence, the state in
Africa got overdeveloped in function, yet it was under developed in capacity.
Hence its reach was far beyond its grasp. So attempts to control prices of
export commodities pushed Africa’s traders from the legal to the illegal
markets – so they smuggled these goods across poorly policed frontiers. Attempts
to control foreign exchange led inevitably to the black market – across Africa,
80% of foreign exchange transactions took place on the black market.
One reason why Africa’s traders did not enter open
resistance to the state given its destructive economic policies was because its
weaknesses created room for evading and avoiding its reach. But such avoidance
of the state was a second best option. So it undermined the efficiency of
markets to allocate. Here is my point: IMF and World Bank sponsored reforms did
not liberalise many markets in Africa. They simply legalised the black market.
Therefore, what we are seeing in Africa is economic failure
begetting a political crisis, which has led not only to economic reform towards
liberal economics but has also promoted reform towards liberal politics. In
1975, only three out of 46 presidents in Sub Sahara Africa were in office after
an election where they faced a rival backed by an opposition political party.
In 2015, they are 47 out of 48 nations.
In 1975, there were only 24 nations with anything similar to
a parliament. Now all nations of SS Africa have parliaments. Across our vast
continent, mass media have been privatised and liberalised and social media has
spread via the mobile phone. Of course most of this reflects the breadth and
not the depth of the liberal ideal. But these developments reflect the growth
of liberalism. And let us remember liberalism is an evolutionary, not a
revolutionary ideal.
****
No comments:
Post a Comment